After a day in which the National Organization for Marriage, an adjunct of the Roman Catholic Church, pressured former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty by bitching about him to various media and encouraging the people on its email list to call him, Pawlenty caved. (Politico)

“After reviewing the pledge, the governor wanted to sign it and we sent it to them this morning,” said Pawlenty spokesman Alex Conant.

Because, of course Pawlenty wanted to pledge his fealty to a special interest group that is shrinking in size and influence and to announce that he, too, would appoint puppet judges to the federal bench so as to allow the executive branch to dictate the outcome of legislation.

The Mormons have backed WAY off since California. You’d think that they’ve never heard of Prop 8 from the way they’ve been lately.

No, NOM is strongly tied to the Catholic Church. Brian, Maggie and most of the staff are Catholic and what little we know about their funding (and we know VERY little) has all been Catholic groups like Knights of Columbus. Frankly, I suspect that they are almost entirely funded by the church itself (or, alternately, a small number of very wealthy catholic individuals) and that is the reason behind all the violations of voter protection laws. Even their arguments have reverted to Catholic theology such as Natural Law.

Cute acronym, Nick, but I’ve found that people take my opinion more seriously when it gives our enemies the courtesy of their own name and doesn’t try to express contempt of them personally.

That’s one reason that we discourage terms like “ReTHUGlican” or commenting on Maggie Gallagher’s weight. Not only is it discourteous, it distracts from our criticism of their policies.

The answer to their puppet-judge pledge is not, “yeah, but you’re fat” or to give them a pejorative nickname. And if it does become our answer, then not only will it turn off people we could persuade, but it lets us know that we have no winning argument.

(Though, of course, The Peter is an exception. It doesn’t alienate a single person on the planet to mock LaBabs.)

Yeah, good point. The problem is that they say they “support marriage”. And by accepting their term for themselves (“National Organization for MARRIAGE) we strengthen them. I did a blog piece on this a month or so ago:

I clicked on the links but I still see no connection to the “National Organization for Women” tag before “Tim Pawlenty”. What am I missing? Since CBN would probably rather keep women barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen, what does that have to do with NOW.

Looks like a “SideShow” GOP convention. Freaks of nature, snake oil,charlatins, scam artists. A “REAL” conservative oldtime REPUBLICAN could walk away with the nomination. Can not wait to see and hear the drama.

The problem is that since the Rednecks, the Religious Right, and (through media outlets like Fox News) a few very wealthy individuals have all taken over the Republican party…most of those old school conservative old time Republicans either are…or are closer to being…Democrats now.

When Mike Huckabee said he didn’t think HE could make it in the current political environment on the Republican side I knew they were in trouble.

Interesting fact from recent New York legislation: New York was the very last state in the country to legalize no-fault divorce. This was late in 2010.

No-fault divorce makes divorce much easier and way less expensive to obtain.

Funny thing, though. I didn’t see NOM parading through Manhattan or in Albany crusading against this particular piece of legislation. I guess divorce is not a priority for NOM, despite Brown’s oft-repeated “Maggie is out there fighting against divorce all the time…”.

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